DIY Terrarium!

Hey everyone! (I don't remember whether I start my posts with a greeting...oh well I shall, from now on. :)

I've always wanted a terrarium, but the ones I find at shops are so expensive. I once came across one that costs around $40??? Which is so ridiculously priced. So yesterday, while walking around aimlessly around in shopping malls, I had a sudden burst of inspiration and decided to make my own terrarium! My first thought was...IKEA! And coincidentally, my family decided to make a trip there today to pick up some new furniture. So today, I made my very first terrarium. :) (I made one back in Year 2, but it wasn't really an ideal one...all I had was a plant, some soil, inside a plastic container.)

Here are the materials I used for my terrarium:

• 1 Glass container ($1.80, purchased from IKEA.) I got it from the Cooking section but hey it would suffice too. :D
• Pebbles. You can purchase them at any plant nursery, or simply pick them up from the seaside #andtakeastrollthere #andtakesomephotos
• Charcoal. Again, you can pick them up at any plant nursery.
• Soil.
• Decorative rocks. You can buy them from IKEA at $3.90 per bottle.

Last but not least and the most important ones...

The plants!

I decided to plant these 2 in my terrarium. It was a tough choice picking out only 2; the plants at IKEA are all so pretty!! They're reasonably priced at $2.90 per pot.

Here's how I made my own DIY terrarium.

1. Place the pebbles at the bottom. They serve as drainage purpose so the excess water in the soil will not stay there and ruin the roots of the plants. :)
2. Place the charcoal on top of the layer of pebbles. This will keep the soil layer fresh.
3. Fill the container with soil. Depending on the type of plants you have in your terrarium, you should get different type of soil. :) Remember to dig some holes for your plants!
4. Place the plants into the soil. Even out the surface of the soil for a cleaner finish.
5. Decorate your terrarium! Place the colourful rocks on the top surface. Feel free to add any figurine or anything. :D

And voilà! You have your very own terrarium! It's personalised and very economical!

I think the 2 tortoises are adorable, and hence I added them in my terrarium. :)

I hope this post will inspire you to make your own terrarium too, or to simply DIY anything!

Until the next time,

Elsa

Running in the lalang field.

Hello everyone!

It has been 1 week since the start of this timely yet short semester break. Or June holidays, whichever you prefer. I guess the highlight of my first week of holidays was the "mini class photo walk" at Punggol. I had been looking forward to this since mid-May, as I know many of my friends in my class are interested in photography / photo junkies / camera junkies / Instagram junkies too. :D We decided to go to the famous lalang field located in Punggol, as I thought it would be a nice place for portraits and hopefully we would be able to catch the golden hour, the sunset and the blue hour.

Unfortunately, the field wasn't as nice as we thought it would be. (Did we go to the wrong field? Or are the lalangs just "not in season"? Either way, I am determined to go back to the Punggol area to hunt for the lalang field once again. #neversaynever #Ijustsaidittwice) And neither did we catch the golden hour that day. :( Needless to say, we didn't have a gorgeous sunset as well. Nevertheless, it was a fun afternoon, snapping away with my awesome friends, eating chips in the lalang field and just sitting down at the field and enjoying the evening breeze.

I even found some wild daisies! Which is extremely rare in the highly concreted Singapore. We also found a millipede (ew). We spent around 5 minutes taking photos of it. I attempted taking one but I felt too disgusted by it and deleted the photos. Sorry to all the nature/insect lovers out there. Juliana has some good shots of it though. Maybe she'll post them on her blog hehehe. In the end, Rachel kicked the millipede down...because she was fed up with us obsessing over the millipede HAHA. Poor millipede! Though it curled up into a ball and survived the fall. Once again, apologies to the insect lovers out there who are reading this. :P

I've put together a short behind the scenes video, which also features my previous photo shoot as I didn't take enough footage of my recent adventure. :)

And here are some behind-the-scenes photos yay! All these are unedited. :)

Nan Fang in the lalang field!

Juliana: the Nat Geo Photographer? Or the zoo keeper HAHAHA.

Happy Rachel :)

Nan Fang looking professional!

My full time model and disciple Juliana! You can find the expanded version of this photo on my Flickr. :)

Melvin! Advertising for the brand of his bag...?

Artsy photos in the making!

Nan Fang and Rachel.

Rachel modelling!

Cool-ish poses on the bridge hehehe.

And I made a gif! I think this is my favourite gif, as of now. (But this is actually only the second one I've made so...)

You can check out the shots I took that day on my Flickr. :)

So that's it for this post! I realise my posts just get shorter and shorter oops. :P

Happy Friday,
Elsa